Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

The Ant howled in sheer agony and rolled onto his back, twisted into a ball. Che found herself sprawled at Salma’s feet, staring upwards. He did not even look at her at first, eyes on his fallen opponent, but the Ant’s howls of pain were now fading into wretched sobbing. There would be no more threat from that quarter any time soon. Salma finally extended one hand and then the other, and with a wince helped her up to her feet. Both of them feeling bruised, they retired to their little patch of earth.

The rest of the slaves were watching them narrowly, in case they would make themselves the new tyrants of the dispossessed. Che and Salma ignored them, huddling together for warmth as the chill of the night descended.

Tisamon was waiting for them at nightfall, just as promised: a whipcord-lean figure caught in the sun’s last rays at the crest of a low hill, angular even under a cloak. His travel habits had not changed. There was a long bag slung on his back that must be his bowcase, and he wore a rapier alongside it that Stenwold had never seen him use. He might have been waiting there for ten minutes or for a hundred years.

Stenwold screwed the fragments of his courage together, halting the awkwardly lumbering automotive just before the hill’s incline and clambering down. It had not exactly been the most amicable of journeys so far. The machine itself was clumsy and long overdue for scrapping, while Totho and Achaeos had instantly developed an intense dislike for one another, making any conversation difficult.

‘They’re picking up company.’ Tisamon’s voice reached him as Stenwold ascended the hill. ‘Another half-dozen soldiers. Another score of slaves. It’s going to be interesting when we come to extract them.’

Extract them? Like a barber pulling a tooth? Stenwold looked at the mess of tracks Tisamon showed him, that held no secrets for his eyes.

‘I can go on tracking all night if you want,’ Tisamon offered, and briefly the spectre of hope, of another stay of execution, raised itself.

‘No,’ said Stenwold, more firmly than he had intended. ‘I don’t think our transport could manage to keep up in any event. There are parts of it that definitely need tightening before we go further.’

‘What is that monster, anyway? We’ve shared some grotesque mounts in our time, but that thing deserves some sort of award.’ Tisamon was never exactly merry, but there was a lightness to his tone that cut Stenwold to the bone.

‘Tisamon. I have to. . I have to. .’ How long had he been given to prepare the words, and now they were nowhere to be found. ‘I have to tell you something.’

They were fast approaching the automotive and its three silent passengers. Tisamon’s pace did not slacken, but something changed in his posture, his breathing, as Stenwold’s anxiety jumped across to him.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. They were now so close. The setting sun was behind the machine so that they were standing in its long shadow.

‘I. .’ But like a well in the desert, the words had dried up since he last visited them. ‘I have to. . show you something.’

Tisamon stopped at last. His face was blank.

‘Time to make camp,’ Stenwold called out to the automotive’s passengers. ‘Achaeos, can you make a fire?’

‘Are you suggesting that I might need Beetle ingenuity for that?’ said the Moth acidly, flitting down from the machine with obvious relish.

‘Tisamon, this is Totho,’ Stenwold said as the artificer climbed down. Tisamon barely spared him a nod. ‘Totho,’ Stenwold added, ‘would you take a look at the machine, make sure everything’s still in place.’

‘Good idea,’ agreed Totho, and he unslung his tools and crouched down between the automotive’s legs, but not without a backward glance at his mentor.

‘And. .’ Here we are. ‘This is Tynisa.’

‘Tynisa?’ Tisamon said, but it was the name alone, the Spider-kinden name, that had caught his ear. He was staring at her as she let herself down the ungainly machine’s side, and his eyes were fixed on her face when she turned to him.

Tisamon made a wordless sound, deep in his throat, like an animal at bay. In a moment he had dropped into his fighting stance, and his claw was raised and drawn back. Stenwold had not even noticed it on his hand a moment before. What surprised Stenwold was that Tynisa was already out with her rapier, and clearly every bit as ready to fight.

‘Tisamon,’ he shouted, ‘listen to me!’

‘ What is this? ’ the Mantis cried in a tone of pure horror. ‘What have you done ?’

‘Tisamon,’ Stenwold began again. ‘I can explain.’

‘ Explain? ’ Tisamon’s eyes were like a strangled man’s. His teeth were bared, every muscle in his body bowstringtaut. The last rays of the sun touched the blade of his claw, caught the long line of Tynisa’s rapier. Achaeos and Totho remained utterly motionless, utterly at a loss.

‘Stenwold, what’s going on?’ Tynisa said tightly.

There was a moment in the very near future, seconds away only, when Tisamon would snap, and then blood would be shed. Stenwold could foresee it with complete clarity. In a normal fight this man was ice, but his own emotions were fiercer enemies than he could ever face down. He heard a hiss escape through the enraged man’s clenched teeth, and knew that the clock’s hands were down, the strike was here. He lunged forward between them, almost onto the point of Tynisa’s sword, seeing Tisamon dodge behind him and the claw sweeping down. He closed his eyes.

He heard Tynisa scream and felt a stabbing pain in his shoulder, and something very cold, the thinnest of thin lines, against his throat. Everything seemed to have stopped.

He opened his eyes very slowly. The first thing he saw was Tynisa before him, her face stricken, and for a moment he thought she must have stabbed him. Her arm was extended, and he followed its line as best as his current situation would allow. There was the hilt of her sword and the narrow blade. . and Tisamon’s hand was flat against it, and the rapier’s length caught between his palm and the spines of his forearm. Its point was frozen over Stenwold’s shoulder, trapped on its way directly towards Tisamon’s face.

Tisamon’s other arm, his right, was across Stenwold’s shoulders, the spines digging straight through the hardened leather and into his flesh. The folding blade of the Mantis’s claw was closed about Stenwold’s throat like a clasp-knife, and it was impossible for him to tell whether it had drawn blood or not. Beyond Tynisa he glimpsed Totho with a spanner in his hand, mouth hanging open; and there was Achaeos, somewhere further off, his dagger clear of its scabbard but pointedly not part of the conflict.

Stenwold heard his own ragged breath mixed up with that of the two duellists.

‘Let him go,’ said Tynisa, and Stenwold reckoned that making demands just then was not for the best.

‘You’re going to fight me?’ Tisamon asked her, and his tone, that clipped precision of speech Stenwold knew of old, indicated a man whose blood was up.

‘I’ve seen you fight and I know what this is about,’ she declared. ‘So I worked for the Halfway House. So what?’

‘For the Halfway. .?’ A frown passed over Tisamon’s face. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The fiefs, in Helleron. .’ Now Tynisa was looking uncertain. ‘You were fighting for the Gladhanders. We destroyed them after. . Isn’t that. .’ His baffled stare was getting to her. ‘What is this about?’

‘Yes, Stenwold, what is this about?’ asked Tisamon, and that dreadful coldness of diction was still there.

‘I will tell you everything, but only you,’ Stenwold finally got out. ‘Let’s go up the hill and I will spare nothing of the truth. You have my word.’